Colin Klinkert Dot Com

Adobe is well known for its photo and video editing software, but its most widely used product is a freebie used by millions of people: Flash technology. It is the technology working behind the scenes on many websites and web servers that allows users to enjoy video online.

As reported in the New York Times, Adobe is to announce that Flash is being extended to the TV screen at the upcoming National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas.

Shantanu Narayen, Adobe CEO, expects TVs and set top boxes supporting the Flash format to be on the US market later in 2009. The top benefit of Flash technology coming to the TV screen is that users will be able to watch the same videos on the PC, phones and TV screens.

Disney CTO Bud Albers said in a statement that his company is one of the backers of Flash on the TV, stating “Coming generations of consumers clearly expect to get their content wherever they want on it, on any device, when they want it. This gets us where we want to go.”

Thanks in part to Flash, Adobe is reporting impressive profit figures. It makes money by selling software that allows media creators to build Flash applications and video. Flash is installed on 98% of all computers and 80% of web videos are viewed using Flash technology. In 2008 Adobe reported income of $871.8 million on revenue of $3.6 billion.

Never one to give ground on any of its related markets, Microsoft is pushing a Flash alternative called Silverlight which it claims has better support for HD 1080p video content. Microsoft states that HD capability is vital in a form format that is to be standard for video on TV. Microsoft’s Brad Becker (a former Adobe executive) said, “I can’t imagine what could be more important on a television than high video quality.”

There’s not been a real competitor to Adobe for ages – Microsoft could just start bridging the gap between the PC and the TV more effectively.

Mobile advertising startup JumpTap is taking on Yahoo and Google by by launching a pay-per-click advertising network called TapMatch.

The new network lets advertisers bid on categories and keywords, and elect to have their contextual ads appear on mobile Web searches. TapMatch also can target users by carrier, location, and other data to serve a more relevant advertisement. Advertisers and marketers will be able to access the ad network through a Web portal where they can upload images, text, or graphic banners for their campaigns.

Paran Johar, chief marketing officer of JumpTap believes “Savvy marketers worldwide are moving their marketing spend to where it matters most — in front of mobile consumers seeking relevant content and immediate gratifications. The mobile advertising market has reached a new phase of maturity where targeting is now essential, and TapMatch uniquely delivers a system that best matches advertisers to their desired audience at their precise moment of intent.”

TapMatch is directly competing with contextual mobile advertising offerings from Yahoo and the mobile version of Google’s AdWords. It is considered to be a lucrative market that will grow as more users access the internet from their phones.

While acknowledging Google’s stake in the space, Johar said that the TapMatch network can offer mobile advertisers more value because it can target devices by carrier, demographic, location, and handset. The company said its beta testers have seen up to three times the click-through rate compared with competing ad networks.

As smartphones become equipped with more desktop-like capabilities, it’s easy to see how people on the move may soon be using them as replacements for laptops.

An advanced facial recognition technology is coming to Facebook, Photo Finder. This application by Face.com uses facial scanning algorithms that would rival those we see on NCIS each week. It will be able to scan through your pics and those public photos of your friends and identify then suggest tags for an untagged people featured in them. Scary stuff!

The speed at which the software can scan through millions of photos appears to be its strength, and while the scan results are not immediate after adding the application, it is possible to view them while the scan is in progress. What’s more Photo Finder saves its results for future use, so that if your friends add the app as well, these photos won’t need to be rescanned.

To begin using Photo Finder, you simply add it to your profile as you would with any other Facebook app. You then click the “Get Started” button and Photo Finder will launch its scan. There’s nothing else you need to do until the scan is complete. You can leave the page to return to other parts of Facebook or even close the web page altogether – Photo Finder will continue to run as you’ve already granted it offline access when you initially added it.

The company has been at pains to address privacy issues and the app will not tag photos within Facebook itself – only within the application, meaning no one can see them unless they too are running the app.

The technology has been in alpha testing for several months among 150 users, colleagues and friends of the creators Gil Hirsch (CEO), Yaniv Taigma (CTO), Eden Shochat, and Moti Shniberg. In that time, around 20 million photos are reported to have been scanned, identifying around 30,000 people.

The company expects to be able to name a ‘launch to the public’ date later this year.

Viralize Your Twitter Account: http://viralfollowers.com/ColinKlinkert/vn/2/

The Power of Partnerships

So you’ve heard about online and affiliate marketing and have learned that they are a great way to make money online, but are you new to the process and don’t know where to begin?

If so it’s time to objectively take stock of your skills and learn what you need to in order to succeed.

At its most basic, online marketing breaks down into two principle parts:  search engine optimization (SEO) and sales copy.  The SEO will drive traffic to your sites, and good sales copy will convince those visitors to buy the product from you.  When you begin to get traffic and sales, you will have the basis of your own ‘list’ of clients. But what if you don’t know a lot about either?

Focus on one or the other to start with and once you have something to bring to the table, you can look for someone to partner with for a campaign.

Sales copy will likely prove to be the valuable skill, and as such is a great place to start.  Look for online resources, books from the local library about copywriting, anything you can get your hands on.  Also, read through the websites that other online marketers have produced.

For every person that wants to be an online marketer and has good sales copy skills, there is another person who is good at SEO but has problems stringing together words into compelling sentences.  Check with forums devoted to online marketing, and you can probably find somebody who is willing to team up with you.

Especially in your early stages of internet marketing, it is better to split all the profit generated than not make any profit at all.  Once you gain some experience, you can strike out on your own, or you may find that you like the partnership and continue with it.

Either way, by combining your skills and somebody else’s at the beginning of your online marketing career, you can start making sales faster.

Where To Find People

For ViralUrl, Frank and I teamed up as we had skills that complimented eachother. ViralUrl has been a big hit and we have plans to take it to the next level as well. I met Frank a while before we partnered through networking. A great new Business Social Network that you can use to meet people to partner with is ViralNetworks! I am on ViralNetworks as well as 18,000 other marketers, so come join us and get networking!

Offer Bonuses When Promoting a Product

One of the best ways to get sales in affiliate marketing is to develop an attractive bonus offer.  If a customer is thinking about buying a product, they will usually search around and try to find the best deal possible.  This is a great opportunity for all affiliate marketers, as you will have people searching for specific keywords and terms, and they will be looking into the deeper pages of search results instead of just the first one or two.  If your bonus is attractive enough, you will get the sale.

So how do you create a good bonus?  There is one main rule:  if your bonus is not good enough to sell as an individual product, then it is not a good bonus.  People look for worthwhile bonus offers, not a group of cheap ebooks that are free, often PLR products, that are often totally unrelated to the product on sale.

Good ideas for bonuses can usually be found in the product itself.  Are you marketing a software program?  If so, then providing instruction about using that program, support on the software, or extra content to be utilized by that program are good routes to try.

For instance, if you’re marketing an SEO Guidebook, a good idea would be to create a few websites that follow the instructions in the book.  Include all relevant files as well as traffic data as a bonus.  That way your customers will see concrete examples of the abstract principles discussed in the book.

Affiliate marketing is a great equalizer.  Everybody starts with the same product and information.  The amount of profit that you generate is completely dependent on how much extra work you are willing to put into it.  Creating a good bonus offer is not an easy process, but once it is complete, you will reap the benefits when the sales start rolling in.

The Sort of Bonuses I Offer

When we promote a product that we think will really help our member base, we offer ‘credits’ to ViralUrl members, or ‘Guaranteed Visitors’. These are two products in our membership site: ViralUrl that we sell every day to members. They convert well and get members good results, so it is a bonus of real value. We sometimes even offer Bonuses to the same value of the product, so it is almost like them getting the product free.

To see offers that we put out with bonuses attached, we have posted a few on our blog, you can see them in this section here: http://viralurls.com/category/bonus-offers/ Simply scroll down to see them all

Colin Klinkert Is on ViralNetworks… You Can See His Profile & Contact Him Here: http://viralnetworks.com/view/2YfSO

Does Twitter Send Traffic?

When I make a blog post, I have a plugin that automatically tweets the fact that I have made a new blog post. The question is, does Twitter send traffic to your blog.

Or…

When you make a Tweet and include a link in it, will your followers click, and then take action? Welcome to the Twitter Traffic Experiment. It is very simple…

Win $25 Simply by Posting a Comment In this Post

To go in the running to win $25, simply make a comment in this thread answering this question:

“What will make you want to subscribe to my RSS feed or email list and read ColinKlinkert.com?” (could be the type of content you want to see, a topic you want to learn etc.)

The way I will get people to see this thread is send 1 tweet now, and 1 again in 12 hours to account for time difference. So two tweets will basically be the source of traffic to this post, the experiment is to see how many people post comments and maybe even retweet my tweet about it…

(Post Your Comments Now & A Winner Will Be Chosen In 24 hours)

Video Intro To This Post Can Be Viewed Here: http://viralnetworks.com/view/CCI0x

Keywords are Important in Marketing

Before you begin an internet marketing campaign, it is crucial to have a specific set of keywords that you will be focusing on.  If you don’t have a list of keywords, your efforts are likely to be ad hoc and aimless, and your campaign could lose focus.  It is far better to have good rankings on a select set of keywords than mediocre rankings on lots of keywords.  Brainstorming is an easy way to come up with keywords.

This is an exercise many of you might remember from grade school, but it works, so give it a try.  Write the name of your product in the middle of a sheet of paper.  Around it, write down the first words and phrases that come to mind, connecting those words to the original with a short line.  Then, for all of those words and phrases, write down what comes to mind when you think about them.

This is called a Cloud Diagram or a Cluster Diagram, and it will give you options you didn’t know you had.  For example, if you were selling web design software then you are already focusing on keywords like “web design” and “how to design a website.”  But you may have missed more focused keywords like “writing HTML” or “coding PHP.”  These are more specific, meaning a smaller audience, but that also means less competition.

If you are conducting a PPC (pay per click) or PPV (pay per view) campaign, using the right keywords and key phrases is imperative.  Choosing the wrong ones can cost you dearly, but by being more focused, you can target your prospects (potential customers) with laser-like precision.

There are also some great tools available to help you select keywords, many are free, like the Google Keyword Tool, which, although designed for Google’s Adwords, can be used by anyone. It is powerful as it shows searches so you know what ones are worth your time and what ones aren’t. Rule of thumb, if it gets less then 1,000 searches a month, scrap it (Unless you are doing PPC and it is a very targeted term that will lead to high conversions.)

You can also use the Google Keyword Tool if you are doing SEO strategies to try and get to the first page of google on those terms. If you find one with a decent amount of searches, search it in google with “keyword” and see how many competing sites there are… of course, the less the better.

Researching and using the right keywords can make or break an internet marketing campaign, particular in the launch phase in affiliate marketing.  So it makes sense to include  keyword research in the early stages of your project planning.

More Tools

As well as the Google tool there are other, more advanced tools available. I use PPCBully to spy on competitiors who are bidding on keywords I have brainstormed to see if they are profitable or not. PPCBully works well, but does take a bit of time to gather the data

Network With Me

If you want to say hi, please feel free to join ViralNetworks, my Business Social Network of choice. Looking forward to hearing from you.

The Intro Video To This Post Can Be Found: http://viralnetworks.com/view/e533m

You’ve probably seen the ads and the listings on job sites:  “Make Great Income From Home!  All You Need Is A Computer!”  Is there truth to these ads?  Yes and no.

If these people are paying for an advertisement, then they are expecting to make some sort of profit on the deal, so they may just be trying to sell you something.  Make sure to research these offers before committing to anything.  But, even though they may be trying to sell you something, these ads are truthful:  you can make money on the internet, and all you need is a computer (and a good work ethic).  The easiest way to start is with a home business using affiliate marketing.

What is affiliate marketing?

Essentially, it is selling someone else’s stuff.  A person will produce a product and register it with an online affiliate management site like Clickbank.  Affiliate marketers (you) will register with that site and promote the product online.  When somebody buys the product through you, they click a special link and part of the sale price goes to the person who developed the product, and part of it goes to you.  Depending on the affiliate offer this can be anything from 30% to 90% to the affiliate.

(Often the reason the product owner offers a huge commission is that the main reason they are selling the product is to build a client list for future marketing purposes.)

The beauty of this system is that once you have developed the marketing strategy to sell this product, it is there for as long as you keep the website active, so you can earn passive income for months after beginning a campaign.  Even after you’ve forgotten about it entirely and have already done three or four other projects, your bank account will keep growing.

Affiliate marketing requires you to be able to write good sales copy (or pay somebody else to do it), and drive web traffic to a website that features that sales copy (or pay somebody else to do it).  Depending on the profit margin, you may be able to subcontract some elements, but it is a good idea to learn every facet in the beginning.  This maximizes your profit and gives you a good grounding on all aspects of affiiliate marketing.

If you don’t have your own product to sell (yet!!), then affiiliate marketing is a great way to start making money online.

Good Affiliate Programs:

Good affiliate programs are programs that sell themselves because the service offered is of high quality, the sales pages have been split tested and proven to convert and there is a lot of social proof (testimonials from other happy customers)

My Suggestion:

ViralUrl is the program I would suggest, as we have thousands of positive feedbacks and our offers are proven to convert at well over 5% from free to paid & we also often pay you just for getting free signups. I know that it is my program so you will be thinking, “of course you will suggest your stuff” and whilst I don’t claim that statement to be wrong, ViralUrl meets all the criteria of a winning affiliate program and our top promoters have earned over $20,000 in affiliate commissions (And these commissions are recurring, either monthly or yearly). If you are not a member of ViralUrl yet, it is worth a look

Video Intro to this Post can be viewed: http://viralnetworks.com/view/hjPkL

At the World Internet Summit this month, one of the key speakers was Atlanta-based Matt Bacak. He first began investing his earnings at age 12, and in the following 15 years survived botched partnerships, failed businesses, credit card debt and bankruptcy. He must have learned a lot from these bad times, because now, 15 years later he is a multimillionaire (he made his first million at age 27).

With this knowledge setting the picture, and his introduction showing pictures of his home, his Hummer, and his private jet – the audience was immediately tuned in to what Matt had to say.

Matt’s forte is membership sites and making money from them was what he was there to talk about. Here are his tips:

1. Before you launch a membership site, work out your expenses – personal and business. Write them down and really understand that it costs you $x to live.

2. Determine how many memberships you need to meet expenses, e.g. if you need $5000 per month, that could be 500 memberships at $10 each per month.

3. Put things into perspective. What do you want? Imagine what it would be like to have an extra $5k, $10k etc per month.

To start a membership site you will need the following:
• An Opt In Page
• An Autoresponder
• A Front End Offer/Sales Letter
• A Membership Website and Software
• Traffic

Identify Your Market
Matt advises people to “think with the end in mind”. Sell something with a bigger product in mind down the line. Think “what’s next?” He believes a great way to find a market for membership sites is to look at monthly magazines on the news stands. The people who buy these magazines are already committed to paying a certain amount each month for this information – so it is likely that they will also pay for a membership to deliver similar material. This is a great tip!

Driving Traffic
Matt believes that the best ways to drive traffic to membership sites are PPC (pay per click), Joint Ventures, and Article Marketing. He is also getting great results from CPV (cost per view) advertising.

Matt is running 3 multimillion dollar companies, all of which were built online. His first company grew by 1057% in 2008 alone. Matt’s strategies saw him run one of the largest internet promotions ever, acquiring 14,897 customers in less than a week.

Want To Learn About Setting up Your Own Successful Membership Site?

Frank Bauer and I have created a course that is not for sale yet, but will be in a few months. Reason it is not for sale is because we are spending our time creating other membership sites. If you subscribe to my email updates, you will be alerted when it is available. Frank and I run multi million dollar membership sites and apply all the info we learn from all the best courses released into one program, so be sure to join my mailing list.

I got sent a mail from someone with this in it and found it very clever:

What Makes 100%? What does it mean to give MORE than 100%? Ever wonder about those people who say they are giving more than 100%? We have all been to those meetings where someone wants you to give over 100%. How about achieving 103%? What makes up 100% in life?

Here’s a little mathematical formula that might help you answer these questions:

If:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

is represented as:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26.

Then:

H-A -R -D-W-O -R -K
8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98%

and

K -N -O -W-L -E-D-G-E
11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5
= 96%

But ,

A-T  -T -I -T  -U -D-E
1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100%

And,

B -U  -L  -L -S -H-I -T
2+21+12+12+19+8+9+20 = 103%

AND, look how far ass kissing will take you.

A-S -S -K -I -S-S -I -N-G
1+19+19+11+9+19+19+9+14+7
= 118%
So, one can conclude with mathematical certainty, that While Hard work and Knowledge will get you close, and Attitude will get you there, its the Bulls*&t and A$s kissing that will put you over the top.